


You Know How I Feel

by EllaStorm



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Gift Work, M/M, Nostalgia, Post-Canon Fix-It, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 16:24:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18695086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllaStorm/pseuds/EllaStorm
Summary: Bringing your boyfriend up to speed on modern times after he spent 1500 years dead in a lake in the English countryside is not an easy task. Just ask Merlin.





	You Know How I Feel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meereswiederkaeuer](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=meereswiederkaeuer).



> This is a Birthday Gift to my wonderful friend @meereswiederkaeuer and - at the same time - a kinda-sorta sequel to the beautiful Merthur-Post-Canon-Fix-It-Fic “The Once And Future King” by @SandraMorningstar (DEFINITELY check it out!).
> 
> This story…really didn’t go in the direction I was expecting it to go. Meaning: There’s no sex. None. Zilch. Nada. INSTEAD you’ll only find teeth-rottingly sweet fluff here. Yeah. I know. Crazy, right?
> 
> Meere, I really hope you like this :* The happiest of birthdays to you.
> 
>    
> (Title taken from the song “Feeling Good”, performed by the great Nina Simone.)

A shrill, bone-shattering scream jolted Merlin out of his sleep.

Before his brain even had the chance to assess the situation, his adrenaline-quickened muscles took over and he clambered out of bed, magic rising beneath his skin like hundreds of golden vipers lifting their heads. Another resounding scream, _female,_ Merlin realised, amidst the panic, then the sound of a blade hitting wood; and he’d made it through the door of his bedroom, stumbling, thanks to a discarded pair of shoes on the floor that he could only save himself from falling over by swift use of magic.

He rushed down the wooden flight of stairs, slipping, catching himself, skipping the last step, charging into the living room where the sounds of blade on wood got louder, and the screaming, too; and then his brain finally caught up at the sight of the blue, ghostly glow of his small television screen, volume turned all the way up, Jack Nicholson’s slasher smile filling the screen, ax-crazy in the most literal sense of the word.

Merlin’s heart almost stopped, when a big hand grabbed his shoulder only a quarter of a second later.

“He’s going to kill her, Merlin! Her son is out in the cold, and her husband has gone mad! We must help her!”

And Merlin remembered suddenly, remembered what had happened last night _,_ felt the absence of hopelessness like a physical, touchable thing, again, after more than a thousand years, and relief left his lips in a laugh. He grabbed the hand of a very nervous Arthur on his shoulder, and squeezed back.

“Don’t worry, Arthur, she can fend for herself.”

And, indeed, a moment later Shelley Duvall’s hand came down, wielding a knife, and cut a deep wound into Jack Nicholson’s finger.

“How did you know?” Arthur sounded confused rather than anxious now, and Merlin switched the TV off and the lights on with not much more than a blink of gold in his eyes.

Arthur’s hair was sleep-tousled, and he was naked, save for a pair of Merlin’s most oversized pyjama pants that _still_ looked a little too small on him; his face showed an intense state of bewilderment, mixed with a hint of shock; and he was so beautiful to Merlin’s eyes that it almost hurt to look at him.

“This box,” Merlin explained, slowly. “Is a television. What happens in it is not real. The thing you just saw is called a _film_. It’s like…a theatre play, recorded and frozen in time. The box – the television – is powered by electricity. A new invention from about a century ago. Everybody in the world uses it.”

“ _Electricity_.” Arthur tasted the word like an unfamiliar dish he wasn’t yet sure whether he found edible. “Is it like…magic?”

“Yes and no. It builds on some of the same principles, but not only magicians can use it. Normal people utilise it to light their houses, watch films, keep their food cold and charge their smartphones.”

“What are… _smartphones_?”

It occurred to Merlin, right then, that there were _a lot_ of conversations he’d have to have with Arthur, and not just about what had happened to Albion – Britain – during the past millennium: Having to illustrate seemingly important concepts like democracy, secularity and women’s rights outright _paled_ in comparison to explaining things like video games and pop music and plastic and the _Internet_ to him. It was going to be just like _The Fifth Element,_ only that Arthur wasn’t an overpowered alien with superhuman mental capacities that could learn everything about the world by looking at a screen for five minutes. For a moment, Merlin was – despite the long stretches of loneliness and pain in between – grateful for the time he’d been given to adapt to the changes around him. He didn’t know how he would fare in Arthur’s position, having been thrown back into this brave new world on a whim, lacking the knowledge of how to interact with it. Like a new-born, dazed and confused in the light after a comfortable eternity of darkness.

“Smartphones,” he said, taking Arthur’s hand and threading his fingers through Arthur’s, who let it happen, still a sheen of confusion in his eyes. “Smartphones are complicated. Let’s start with the television first, okay?”

“ _Okay_?”

“It means… _approved_?”

Arthur tilted his head to the side with a small smile. “ _Okay_ , then.”

Merlin tugged on his hand, led him over to the couch, sat him down and started his search for the remote control. He didn’t have to look very far – it was lying on the floor in front of the TV. Maybe it had been knocked off the table when Merlin had stormed out with his coat fluttering behind him a few hours ago, but, anyway, Arthur must have stepped on it, probably on his way back from the bathroom (tap water and lavatory flushes were the first two concepts of this new world Merlin had taught him), and gotten a surprise-dosage of modern mass media in the process. Lucky for him they’d shown _Shining_ at this time of night and not…well, there were many things Merlin could think of that were probably in need of a lot more explaining than Jack Nicholson almost murdering his entire film family in a haunted hotel. Game shows, for example. Porn. _Doctor-Who-_ reruns. The list went on.

“Alright. I just switched the TV off with magic, but you can’t do that, so you’ll have to use this thing…it’s called a remote control. This here is the ON/OFF button. And _that_ is the volume…”

Arthur blinked at him, interested. “ _Volume_?”

For the next half hour Merlin slowly guided him through the correct use of a television and learned in the process – thanks to Arthur’s infinite questions – that he didn’t have as much of a clue of his own remote control as he’d thought. For one, he had no idea how _exactly_ the chemicals inside a battery worked, never mind what several of the more obscurely labelled buttons signified or how the channels on the TV had come to be sorted exactly the way they were. Arthur was a fast learner, however. He’d always been good with a sword, and Merlin remembered that any new weapon he’d trained with, back in the day, he’d gotten around to quicker than most of his knights; not even to speak of his natural knack for politics and diplomacy.

And, really, what was technology – the wielding of a remote control or a smartphone – but another weapon for Arthur to master. What was the Internet but another forum for human interaction, for _politics._ People hadn’t changed that much, and if _Arthur_ couldn’t conquer this new world for himself, then nobody could.

Merlin told him as much, somewhere between Arthur proudly changing channels by himself and activating and deactivating the teletext, upon which Arthur pressed the OFF-button. He sat there for a moment, contemplating the dark screen.

“I want to do it, Merlin. I want to understand this world.” He made a face. “Even though I already feel like my head is falling off from all the new things you’re teaching me.”

“You can, Arthur. Like I said – if not you, who? And…” He took Arthur’s hand that was resting in his lap, let his fingers slide through Arthur’s, revelling in the skin-to-skin. “You’re not alone. I’m with you. Don’t forget that.”

Arthur looked at their joint hands, then back up at Merlin. There was something vast and sad in his blue eyes, and for a while it felt like Merlin’s living room was getting too small for all the memories behind them. Memories from more than a thousand years ago. _For him it must feel like it was only yesterday_ , Merlin thought, longingly.

“When I was…when I was dying,” Arthur began. The words sent a dull, familiar pain through Merlin’s chest. “I said-“

  
“- _thank you_ ,” Merlin completed the sentence, set back, for a moment, to all the endless nights he’d lain awake, mouthing Arthur’s parting words, again and again. “I remember.”

“Yes. It’s just…That’s not what I _wanted_ to say. What I wanted to say, I _didn’t_ say – I feared… I’d never truly said it, and I was sure I had missed the moment. That you wouldn’t want to hear it from me while I was dying, when I’d never said it to you while I was alive.”

Merlin’s thumb started drawing small circles on the back of Arthur’s hand to signify that he understood, perfectly. In that past life they’d shared they’d been friends and lovers and everything in between, but all of these things had gone without them having to speak about them. Every look, every touch, every kiss had happened in perfect synchronicity, all their conversations had taken place beyond words, because they’d just _known_ each other so deeply; and Merlin had never taken exception to it at all.

“Arthur, you don’t need to-”

“But I want to,” Arthur interrupted him. “This is a new world, Merlin. For you, and for me. A world with _televisions_ and _electricity_ and running water out of…glimmering steel ducts. A world in which you are not my servant, and I am not your King; in which you have magic, and I don’t have to hate you for it; and in which I will, likely, not get into a swordfight ever again. A world, in which I am telling you, Merlin, as true as I am sitting here, and as alive, that I love you, in all the ways I know how.”

The words swept through Merlin like a summer breeze, their honesty and bravery and warmth; and Merlin pulled Arthur in with a small, magical nudge, watched his eyes widen, surprised at the proximity but not afraid.

“It is a new world,” Merlin whispered, just short of Arthur’s lips. “And in this one and the last one, and the next one, if there will be one, King or no King, I love you, too, Arthur.”

And then he let himself kiss Arthur and be kissed by him, after having put the words down between them, after finally having spoken what they had already said a thousand times with no words at all; and maybe, in this new world, after everything, they were going to be alright.


End file.
